Tom Thumb Blues

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The night after my last entry I slept under a tattered web of fevered dreams. A hot coal burned in my stomach and I shook convulsively. Fortunately, I have been accepted as the fifth member of the Udugamma family, weird uncle Jon from California. I stay with them when I'm in Kandy. Ananda, the father, received his MD from UC Davis. He now has me on a course of antibiotics. My fever is gone but I haven't eaten anything except bananas for days. I made a noble effort to conduct my lectures, but with frequent bathroom breaks.

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Following my advice Ananda's son will be attending college in the US this fall. To ensure success, Ananda decided to hold an alms-giving ceremony. He invited several priests from the local monastery. The preparations were intense. When everything was ready I was called downstairs. I sat on the floor with the family. In front of us five priests dressed in orange robes sat on white sheets. Each held a fan in front of his face. A spool of white thread was passed to each person and thus we were all connected together. The priests began chanting in Pali-- the sacred language of the Buddhist sutras. Because the priests had Perahera duties, the chanting had to be cut short at two hours. I was grateful; a proper chant goes on all night. Afterward, the thread was cut into bracelet-size lengths and the pieces were tied around each of our wrists.

I learned that the older priest was in fact the highest priest in all of Sri Lanka. He doesn't normally make house calls, but it turns out that he happens to be Ananda's uncle. I guess that would explain the police presence outside our house during his visit.

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I have a tiny crush on Shelani, Anada's wife. Just now she told me that I wear a sarong quite confidently for a westerner. I told her the trick was in learning how to tie the knot securely.

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Through my veil of illness I have been following the assassination of the foreign minister. (I have a knack for choosing interesting times to go abroad. The first Gulf War, 9/11, and the Afghan war were all apparently my fault.) Of course Kandy has been ringed with checkpoints since before the assassination because of the Perahera, but I hear that no one is getting in or out of Colombo. A common opinion is that factions within the LTTE (the Tamil Tigers) are trying to restart the war, perhaps by triggering a response like 1983 when angry mobs equipped with voting records went from one Tamil house to the next in Colombo murdering the occupants. Those riots were a seminal event in the rise of the LTTE.

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Photos

Around Kandy 1
Elephants and machine guns

Around Kandy 2
Temple elephants

Around Kandy 3
Offering for Jackie's nephew.

Around Kandy 4
Note monkeys on the building